Rate and Discuss: The Unquiet Dead

[SiHart]

Dickens vs The Gelth! New Doctor Who travels back in time and meets Dickens and the Blue Elementals.

What are your thoughts on Mark Gatiss' first script for Doctor Who?

Si xx

[duncan]

Best of the series in my opinion. This is when I really accepted that Doctor Who was back. It's just how I like my Who to be and the pre-titles sequence has not been bettered by any other since then.

This was the first real scare my daughter got and she started off sitting on the carpet in front of the TV. But, by the time the old woman was screeching her way across the snow and the opening titles crashed in, Amy was on my lap gripping my arm tightly.

[Dino]

This series for me had an unbreakable run of three top episodes.
Reintroduce the series... Tick.
Show how the series deals with space and special effects... Tick.
Show how the series can do "Historical"... Tick!

All the elements came together to show this series wasn't a one-off and was here to stay.
And most interestingly, after McCoy being the manipulator behind the scenes, it was refreshing seeing the Doctor getting duped.
None of the other historicals really reached this episode. Oh ok, "Vincent And The Doctor" then. But it still took over four years!

[Mab]

Depends how you define historicals -where does something become a "historical" - is World War II too recent to be a historical?

I do think it's Gatiss's best script for the new series so far, and it IS a very good story in its own right too. I think it could have done with a little more gleeful nastiness, you kind of had the sense that they were reining in quite a bit and secretly wanted to really go for it, but it WAS a great story.

The costume historian in me will just say that Rose looked more like an experienced Edwardian streetwalker than a 1869 lady of fashion, but we'll move on from that, you can hardly expect her to know her dress history.

Overall though, I like this one very much indeed.

[SiHart]

It's an odd one, because on the one hand it's terribly atmospheric, brilliantly acted and rather scary, but on the other, the Doctor gets it all wrong, is tricked by the Gelth and spends all that time locked in a cell holding Rose's hand while Charles Dickens saves the day by working out the gas thing. The Doctor is quite often not at the centre of the resolutions of the stories in this series.

But I really like it. I came away at the time thinking it was marvellous, and I still think it;s really good, just perhaps not as good as everyone else thinks it is.

Perhaps people like it because it looks a bit like Talons of Weng-Chiang and the whole Hinchcliffe era?

Si xx

[duncan]

And I loved the line "What the Shakespere?!"

[Andrew Curnow]

At the time, I remember looking forward to it as the first 'traditional' story, but coming away from it feeling slightly disappointed after the sheer exuberance of the first two episodes.

But I've watched it several times since and like it more and more each time. The carriage scene ("That American bit in Martin Chuzzlewit, what was that about, padding?") is just hilarious, the seance scene is really atmospheric (I jump every time the Gelth appears), and the ending is very moving ("Forever"). In fact in the emotional sense I'd say this is by far Gatiss' best script - in The Idiot's Lantern the young lad gets a blatant speech when he leaves home, and Amy's "fancying somebody you shouldn't" bit to Bracewell in Victory doesn't feel very natural. But here, the genuine emotion involved in an old author looking for some kind of validity, and the Doctor's gentle assurance to him (not to mention the earlier scene where the Doctor apologies to Dickens for having told him to shut up) just feel very real and sincere and are nicely underplayed.

Plus, as Zel will attest, I regularly cry "For shame" and "It's ungodly" in conversation. Good old Gwyneth!!

[Larry]

I've always been a huge fan of the Hinchcliff era of Doctor Who and for me The Unquiet Dead, certainly has that Hinchcliff era feel to it and would of fitted perfectly into seasons 13/14 .

[Rob McCow]

...Except it's not really as good. What this really reminded me of was one of the Big Finish plays, specifically Phantasmagoria. The plot sort of lollops along with things happening simply because they need to, dragging us from set-piece to set-piece.

There's a lot about The Unquiet Dead that I like, especially the performances from just about everyone including Eve 'Eyeballs' Myles. But the story seems rather lumpy and uneven. I'm also not keen on the 'explanation' for the end of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Not a stinker by any means, but one of the weaker episodes of the first series. Which is of course, because the first series was so bloody good!

[Larry]

...
Not a stinker by any means, but one of the weaker episodes of the first series. Which is of course, because the first series was so bloody good!

yet of his 3 stories I personaly think this is Mark Gattis's best.

[Rob McCow]

I prefer The Idiot's Lantern. I think it's a bit more coherent, with a similar level of fun.

Victory of The Daleks was half brilliant, half awful.

[Larry]

I prefer The Idiot's Lantern. I think it's a bit more coherent, with a similar level of fun.

Victory of The Daleks was half brilliant, half awful.

personaly I think Gattis is a far better actor then he is writer.

[Rob McCow]

Agreed!